Because that is always the result of your kinds' brand of doing things. Your way of thinking is not logical or even rational. Even with CP you main concern turns out not to be justice or revenge, but costs. No body costs society more than the elderly or the infirm do and they give nothing back. Social security (Old age pension) really only covers the first few years or so, after that it is nothing more than welfare. And we all know just how much the Right-wing hates welfare.........

http://apps.asce.org/reportcard/index.cfm?reaction=full&page=6

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_19_2/tsc_19_2_dams.shtml

So what you are saying is people are not emigrating from the US to the EU because of the media and not how they feel about thier own quality of life and the want or meed to improve it?  Man you have to really watch out for the media, don't you?

There is no problem in commenting, we are all entitled to our opinion.  Now opinions are interesting how they are formed, some do it with actual knowledge some base it upon what they hear second hand.

I did leave myself an out by saying 'with a few exceptions'.   When we as individuals visit a different country and culture one of the things that we can not get away from is pre-judging or just judging thier quaility of life based upon ours.  It is normal and natural to think that everyone wants our quality or style of life, no matter where we come from.  Now I'm not talking about things like clean living conditions and basic freedoms.

Okay, so I checked out your link.  I looked for a reference to the American Institution that did the study.  You are not talking about the Workers World are you?  There was a reference to the United Nations.  I got the feeling that not a whole lot of analyzing went into the study.  I get a very directed slant to the article, didn't appear to look at all of the demographics or make up of all the people living in the U. S. i.e. Native Americans, Hispanics, Whites, etc.

This is why I made the comment above about statistics, the person putting them together can easily manipulate numbers to achieve what purpose they want.  Is the U.S. a perfect place to live, without a doubt no.  Is a good quality of live achievable in the U.S., yes.  Is the American still alive and well, you bet.

Now based upon you previous replies you will probably disagree, that's okay, I don't have a problem with that. 

Indeed you're not alone in that opinion, yet there are errors in the process and that is incontestable, and death is final and irrevocable.

There is no solution apart from implementing the death penalty x years after the verdict....but even with that, errors are detected many years later with the discovery of new technologies.

I do not favor the death penalty for an additional reason: When it is implemented, the search for the other/correct perpetrator is totally abandoned because the thought of error is painful...and because there's no longer a reason to search. Therefore, the real miscreant escapes to kill again.

HOWEVER: The OP was about theft and a tough punishment for it. Too bad. She was offered a $5,000 settlement and refused... She can slave forever, and I don't particularly care. She did the crime and then brazenly stated ANY punishment would be too much as it would take food out her childrens' mouths. From the size of her, better it should come out of her mouth.

Too many words have been wasted on this thief already.

I kind of figured that I get this sort of questioning. Some just prefer a popular myth over an unpopular truth. This was all over the news not too long ago and many of these "questions" were answered than.

BTW, Of course I didn't mean Workers World. They're just one of many who reported it.

Also, where have you been living the passed few years? America is in the toilet now because of the right-wing. You almost went over the edge. It still maybe better than most other places to live, but in the West it is near the bottom in comparison, especially for your children. In other words while others may live in an outhouse, living in a solid gold toilet is still living in a toilet.

Now I'm going to leave this conversation at that since it has strayed way off course and became irrelevant...... If you don't like what I said I don't care. I only state reality. You're only ever going to get the real truth out of me.

Agreed, the personal attacks are getting old..

It costs $.74 for a bullet and $5000 for a funeral. Appeals are made by tons of convicts not just those on death row, so factoring in that cost as an expenditure of Capitol punishment "only" is ridiculous.

lol

Just because you chose not to Be a part of the Contributing society, does not mean all are that way. My mother inlaw works with the disabled daily as they work at real jobs contributing to society. Many if not most of the elderly earned thier pensions and benefits, tho ur arguement has stirred thoughts of the euthanization of lazy sponges that refuse to contribute.

I've had a couple of goes at dragging it back again... only to see it deviate yet again.

One more...

Excessive penalty is only a viable description when compared to other acts/penalties.

You can choose to balance them two ways.

1 is to start with Murder [typically 20 years/life/whatever] and work backwards to slap on wrist for IP theft.

or

2. You can have a prohibitive penalty for IP theft and work UP to [obviously more] harsher penalty for murder...ie. Execution.

Those who see themselves as akin to the OP will root for option 1.

Option 1 will do nothing to alter people's understanding of the legitimate criminality relating to IP theft.

Option 1 will promote more instances of, or rather will do nothing to dissuade people from piracy, so it's useless.

If and when you have direct involvement with IP [your own] you will want to see some mechanism for its protection.

Is it harsh [the OP]?  Yes.

Is it 'just'?  Probably not in the current climate of leniency shown by the current Legal system.

Is THAT system flawed?  Yes.

Is there anyone on the planet who thinks it is NOT flawed?  Yes, however they will ALL be the very same criminals who have played the system and its flaws.

The greatest flaw?  The advantages afforded to those who can pay.

The 'poor bastard' will always be bastardised because he is poor.

THAT is a failing.

Trying to punish piracy is like trying to order the tides around. New technology will be adopted, and people will use the most efficient and easy mechanisms to get the products they want. It is companies and governments that must adapt to this reality- organizations that can and will adapt to the new environment. America's intellectual property laws are simply too old and too random to make sense in the modern age.

As a result, they do little to profit artists and other forces behind creative works. Mostly, intellectual property gives profits to lawyers, and law firms. Organizations that exist only to enforce intellectual property, and thus wouldn't have to exist without intellectual property. As a deterrent, intellectual property has done almost nothing, but it still costs large sums of money and lowers the overall quality of the internet. As such, intellectual property laws should be immediately and completely eliminated.

As far as I can tell, there are two plausible results once piracy is legalized. The most likely result is that companies will find ways to still make as much in profits as they always have. Maybe just asking for donations will be enough. Maybe people will start having to pay for games before the games even start being produced (X amount of people would pledge to pay Y money and if enough money was pledged, everyone would be charged for the amount he pledged and the game would begin production.) It's difficult to tell how the free market would solve the issues without regulation, but every other technology in history that helped distribute art for cheaper to more people has led to a major expansion of artistic industry. The internet shouldn't be any different.

Alternatively, when intellectual property is eliminated, maybe major corporations won't be able to make enough money off of their art, and will be driven off the market. This isn't actually as disastrous as people make it out to be. People will still want high quality games, and lacking good artists people will turn to scientists who will supply higher quality computers at a faster rate given the improved demand for such machines. Free games made by individual hobbyists today are generally better than the biggest budget Atari games made in the past- this is because the technology behind them is so much better that a single programmer who is just trying to have fun, can surpass the efforts of large groups of programmers working a mere 30 years into the past. Such a result is a disaster for the companies currently operating today, but that is normal: change hurts those in power and opens up opportunities for those with the ability to take advantage of them. Profit motive is not actually necessary for the production of art.

With that said, my take on the prosecution of copyright offenders is twofold. From the point of view of enforcement, it's like hearing about the elections in Iraq- meaningless results from a meaningless war, that cannot possibly give humanity any form of actual benefit. An ongoing cost that we should stop paying whenever we're willing.

As for the person who ran afoul of piracy laws- basically, people have bad things happen to them all the time, so I'm not particularly more interested in victims of law enforcement compared to say, victims of drunk driving. However, some people seem to feel that either piracy victimizes companies or that simply breaking the law is pure evil in and of itself. Given that intellectual property laws have no actual reason to exist it's impossible for people to be victims of intellectual theft. If aliens in another dimension were interested in our art, I'm sure nobody would feel victimized to learn that they had been playing our games for years- IE, we accuse people not of an active crime, but of a passive act, or to be specific, intellectual theft accusation is a accusation of not doing something. It's reasonable applaud people who give their money to charities and game developers, and absurd to say either one is non-productive. However, not doing a good thing is VERY different from hurting someone else. In fact, most logic that demands that people must do the "right" thing is used by people who hate the game industry and feel that it's just a distraction from school, college and work, the "just" actions that people "should" be doing at all times.

As for the law being such a sacred object, most people routinely break the law, so the idea that a person is abnormally evil just because he breaks the law is absurd. A person cannot be in the bottom 50% of humanity by doing an act that more than 50% of humanity takes part in. That's not to say that most people break any particular law, but simply that once you take into account everyone who goes above the speed limit, everyone who doesn't perfectly follow safety regulations, everyone who litters, etc. you'll find that that covers most of America. Or, as Jesus put it so well "let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!"